It has been found that during early metastasis in breast cancer, the early disseminated cancer cells in the bone marrow of breast cancer patients have a breast cancer stem cell phenotype (Balic et al, 2006). Another group have found that mesenchymal stem cells can undergo spontaneous transformation after four to five months in culture (Rubio et al, 2005). Thus, it is likely that during early metastasis of breast cancer, transformation of adult stem cells could have occured. Therefore, it can be seen that tumors arising out of stems cells undergoing neoplastic transformation will lead to a poorer prognosis. These cancer stem cells are capable of limitless proliferation and metastasizing to the other parts of the body. I thought that knowing the type of genetic hits and the steps of progression of a normal stem cell to a cancer stem cell will allow researchers to understand the biology behind early metastasis of cancer cells with stem cell properties.
Lastly, it will be interesting to know how adult stem cells respond to factors resulting in genetic insults. Elucidating how the adult stem cells respond to oxidative stress or electrophilic direct-acting and indirect-acting compounds will allow us to evaluate the degree of susceptility of the stem cell to such insults.
Citations
1) Balic M, Lin H, Young L, Hawes D, Giuliano A, McNamara G, Datar RH, Cote RJ. Most early disseminated cancer cells detected in bone marrow of breast cancer patients have a putative breast cancer stem cell phenotype. Clin Cancer Res. 2006 Oct 1;12(19):5615-21.
1) Balic M, Lin H, Young L, Hawes D, Giuliano A, McNamara G, Datar RH, Cote RJ. Most early disseminated cancer cells detected in bone marrow of breast cancer patients have a putative breast cancer stem cell phenotype. Clin Cancer Res. 2006 Oct 1;12(19):5615-21.
2) Rubio D, Garcia-Castro J, Martin MC, de la Fuente R, Cigudosa JC, Lloyd AC, Bernad A. Spontaneous human adult stem cell transformation. Cancer Res. 2005 Apr 15;65(8):3035-9.
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